Denise
Moore is the Indiana caseworker who recommended taking 4-year-old Anthony
Bars away from a loving foster mother and placed him, instead, with a couple
who starved
and beat him to death over a 10-month period.

Had
Moore bothered with the required background check, she would have known
that the new "home" had a long record of abuse within the child protective
services and that the new "father" had a felony battery conviction for
savagely beating his own daughter with an extension cord.

Earlier this month, D. Sue Roberson, director of the Indiana Personnel Department,
announced that no disciplinary action would be taken against Moore. Why?
Citing confidentiality
laws, Roberson added, "I am not at liberty to discuss the findings."

Days
later, Cheryl Sullivan, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services
Administration, stated that disciplinary
action is still possible. But she affirmed confidentiality and painted
her agency as the true victim.

Sullivan's
statements came in the wake of a four-month investigation by TV-station
WTHR. It came after a court case that convicted Anthony's killers, after
criticism from Rep. Phil Hinkle and Gov. Joe Kernan, and heart-breaking
questions from Florence Hurst, the foster mom who spent 15 months caring
for Anthony. She wanted to adopt Anthony and his sister before Moore recommended
their removal.

The
circumstances surrounding Anthony's death become more wrenching with
examination. But dwelling on them misses the larger point: the children abused
by CPS
are not merely the fault of "bad" caseworkers. They are not restricted
to Indiana. The bodies of dead children demand we ask: is CPS harming
- not helping -- children?

I
say "bodies" because Anthony is not an isolated incident. Almost one
year to the day after Anthony's death, 7-year-old Mark Adrian Norris
II's was
found starved and covered with bedsores in an Indiana house, which was
set on fire to disguise his death-through-neglect.

Mark's
caseworker, Michael
Warrum neglected his required monthly visits to the home and did not
follow up on complaints that Mark was being starved. For his complicity
in Mark's death, Warrum lost his civil service job. And, presumably, his
pension.

The
problem is not exclusive to Indiana. The carelessness with which the Florida
CPS "loses" children became
a national scandal last year. In California, even the state's Department
of Social Services admits families
are being aggressively torn apart and children unnecessarily placed in
foster care. The problem is federal and systemic.

A
column that questions the fundamental value of the current CPS will elicit
outraged feedback from social workers who protest that they sincerely care
for children. I believe them without question. For one thing, I have a
sister-in-law working within that system.

The
problem is not the intentions of individuals but the structure and rules
of the CPS, such as confidentiality. As long as those rules remain, the
institution will harm children.

Consider
an analogy: a factory with machinery and procedures designed to build airplanes.
A worker on the factory floor loudly protests that he is there to build
motor boats. But, as long as he uses the factory's machines and follows
its rules, he will produce airplanes whatever his intentions. The structure
of the institution defines the product, not the worker's intentions.

What
is necessary to protect other Anthonys within the system?

First
and foremost: transparency. Both Roberson and Sullivan drew a shroud
of silence across Anthony's body. Confidentiality was never meant to hinder
the investigation into dead children. A threatened bureaucracy is using
silence to immunize itself. As Rep. Hinkle has said, "You cannot hide
behind confidentiality when there's been an obvious wrongdoing."

But
the actions of the Indiana CPS amount to more than this. They are attempting
to shift the blame for dead children away from their own policies onto
the shoulders of society.

Sullivan,
before the Indiana Commission on Abused and Neglected Children and Their
Families, asked, "Does it make more sense for the child protective service
workers to be sitting outside a juvenile justice courtroom or located with
the police?" She suggested that caseworkers should be protected from "illegal
drug labs" and other threats by being further removed from public access
by being housed in police stations or courthouses. Who protects Anthony
from them?

The
CPS does not need more confidentiality, more difficult access and less
accountability. There is no overriding reason for silence: the deaths of
Mark and Anthony do not threaten national security or compromise the witness
protection program. They raise questions that threaten the structure of
an institution that may be complicit in killing the very children it was
constructed to protect.

Short
of deconstructing CPS, the solution is more -- not less -- accessibility
and the imposition of criminal liability for the gross misconduct of caseworkers
and superiors.